For the second time in three years, a lightning strike near (as very damn close), my house took out my home telephone, cable modem, and a router. I wasn't home but one neighbor said it appeared to hit in the field behind my house and another neighbor said he saw a bluish light as it struck. The strike occurred Saturday and they came today to fix the phone and replace the modem.

This time, it also took out a laptop PC and the PCI slots on the motherboard of my main PC along with the NIC. Good cards no longer work in any PCI slot so now I have to to use the onboard LAN. Of course, everything, save the router, was plugged into a Belkin surge protector, which still works. The router shared an outlet with my PC speakers, which still work too. Lightning is funny and I don't mean ha-ha funny.